Having An Art’s Experience 

 John Dewey (1859-1952) was perhaps the most influential American

philosopher of the 20th century. His theories on progressive education and
democracy called for a radical democratic reorganization of education and
society.  

Unfortunately, the John Dewey theory of art has not received as much
attention as the rest of the philosopher’s work. Dewey was among the first
to view art differently. Instead of looking at it from the side of the audience,
Dewey explored art from the side of the creator. 

John Dewey Theory distinguishes ordinary experience from what he

calls an experience. The difference between the two is one of the most
fundamental aspects of his theory. 

Ordinary experience has no structure. It is a continuous stream. The

subject goes through the experience of living but does not experience
everything in a way that composes an experience. 

An experience is different. Only an important event stands out from general

experience.

“It may have been something of tremendous importance – a quarrel with

one who was once an intimate, a catastrophe finally averted by a hair’s
breadth. Or it may have been something that in comparison was slight –
and which perhaps because of its very slightness illustrates all the better
what is to be an experience. There is that meal in a Paris restaurant of
which one says “that was an experience”. It stands out as an enduring
memorial of what food may be.” (p.37)

An experience has structure, with a beginning and end. It has no holes and
a defining quality that provides unity and gives it its name; e.g. that storm,
that rupture of friendship. 

 I think that, for Dewey, an experience is what stands out from general
experience. It is the parts of life that are worth remembering. Routine in that
sense is the opposite of an experience. The stressful routine of the working
life is marked by repetition which makes days seem inseparable. After
some time in the same routine, someone might notice that every day
appears the same. The result is that there are no worth-remembering days
and the daily experience becomes short of the unconscious. An experience
is like an antidote to this situation. It wakes us up from the dream-like state
of daily repetition and forces us to confront life consciously and non-
automatically. This makes life worth living.

The Aesthetic Experience

An aesthetic experience is always an experience, but an experience is not

always an aesthetic one. However, an experience always has an aesthetic
quality. 

Works of art are the most notable examples of an aesthetic experience.

These have a single pervasive quality that permeates all parts and provides
structure. 

The John Dewey theory also notices that the aesthetic experience is not
only related to appreciating art, but also with the experience of making:

“Suppose… that a finely wrought object, one whose texture and

proportions are highly pleasing in perception, has been believed to be a
product of some primitive people. Then there is discovered evidence that
proves it to be an accidental natural product. As an external thing, it is now
precisely what it was before. Yet at once it ceases to be a work of art and
becomes a natural “curiosity.” It now belongs in a museum of natural
history, not in a museum of art. And the extraordinary thing is that the
difference that is thus made is not one of just intellectual classification. A
difference is made in appreciative perception and in a direct way. The
aesthetic experience – in its limited sense – is thus seen to be inherently
connected with the experience of making.” (p.50)

 
Emotion And Aesthetic Experience

According to Art as Experience, aesthetic experiences are emotional, but

not purely emotional. In a beautiful passage, Dewey compares emotions
with a dye giving color to an experience and granting structural unity.

“Physical things from far ends of the earth are physically transported and
physically caused to act and react upon one another in the construction of
a new object. The miracle of mind is that something similar takes place in
experience without physical transport and assembling. Emotion is the
moving and cementing force. It selects what is congruous and dyes what is
selected with its color, thereby giving qualitative unity to materials
externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through the
varied parts of an experience. When the unity is of the sort already
described, the experience has aesthetic character even though it is not,
dominantly, an aesthetic experience.” (p.44)

In contrast to what we usually think of emotions, Dewey does not think of

them as simple and compact. For him, emotions are qualities of a complex
experience that moves and changes. Emotions evolve and change over
time. A simple intense outbreak of fright or horror is not an emotional state
for Dewey, but a reflex.